my adventures with ALG, crosstalk, lakorn, and everyday life in thailand

More กขฃ: Fun ‘N’ Games With พยัญชนะ — And สระไทย Too

Screenshot of the Thai vowel game from กอไก่ (ก-ฮ)(สระไทย) ฝึกอ่านไทย APP

When I started to more actively familiarize myself with the Thai writing system a few months ago, I spent some time on dekgeng.com, and found it helpful for learning the Thai letters1, particularly the game that has you match letters’ written forms with their spoken names, and the chart that lets you click on a letter to hear its line from the เอ๋ย กอไก่ poem/song.2

Then a couple months ago I got a tablet and after trying out various apps, found one that I liked best, available for free here. And even though I hadn’t yet intended on branching out into other parts of the Thai writing system, I ended up getting sucked into playing the สระไทย (Thai vowels) game, and doing surprisingly well at it. In fact, when playing around with this app I’ve probably spent more time with the vowels, which are the greater unknown and therefore more interesting, than the consonants, which are already pretty much old hat.

The other thing I started doing differently is playing the consonant game in a new way. When the name of the letter is read out, I write the letter down on a piece of paper before l look at the screen. It’s a more active form of recall because I’m not being prompted by the onscreen multiple choice selection, and also because I have to really know what each letter looks like — all the little graphic details that I could get by without knowing when I only had to recognize which of the four onscreen choices was correct.